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Author Tom Kizzia is most well-known for his best-selling 2013 book, Pilgrim’s Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier, which was chosen by the New York Times as the best true crime book set in Alaska. Kizzia began his life in our state in the late 70s as a Homer-based journalist at the Homer News. In the early 80s he was hired by the late Howard Weaver to work at the Anchorage Daily News where he started as a crime reporter. In 1983 he visited McCarthy for the first time to investigate a mass shooting in that ghost town that had killed 6 people. Kizzia and his wife later built a cabin near McCarthy. It was this connection to the community that enabled Tom to get close to Papa Pilgrim the patriarch of his most famous book, Pilgrim's Progress. Cold Mountain Path, Kizzia’s third book, preserves the rollicking history of McCarthy from the abandonment of the Kennecot mine in 1938 until the mail day murders in 1983. For Cold Mountain Path, Kizzia was named 2022 Historian of the Year by the Alaska Historical Society.

Link to Howard Weaver's obituary by Tom Kizzia